Re: [ga] Nominet UK's response to ICANN's Strategic Plan

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard and all former DNSO GA members or other interested
stakeholders/users,

  Nominets' argument against it's portion of funding to the GNSO/ICANN
has allot to do with how large the budgets have been and are projected
to be.  gTLD's are no more or less private enterprise than is any ccTLD.

What Nominet is wanting is a much lower GNSO/ICANN cost due
to waste and mismanagement and is only using gTLD's as an excuse.

It has been and remains our members position that any and all openly
introduced TLD's should be self supporteda/funded and be not
for profit registries.  sTLD [ Sponsored TLD's is a relatively
new concept that had promise...  However the process errors
and subsequent decisions/judgments made as and introduced
as policies that had no actual stakeholder/user support that
could be measured, is bound to fail and most of these new
sTLD's have failed miserably on several levels...

   Additionally ICANN is supposed to be a non-profit organization
under US law and as such 66% of all income is supposed to come
from donations.  This has not been the case.. And hence, leaving
many ccTLD registry operators with a bad taste in your mouth,
Nominet not withstanding...

Richard Henderson wrote:

>   I think Nominet and other ccTLD registries accept that they should
> contribute to the running of the international resource which all
> nations benefit from. That much seems fair enough provided it is
> combined with shared international responsibility and oversight for
> the resource.
>
> You share an international resource. You share in its costs. You share
> in its oversight and governance.
>
> What the Nominet response argues is that the money contributed should
> be in relation to the running costs of the ccTLDs, NOT the running
> costs of gTLDs which are launched as private enterprise by private
> entities: these enterprises should be self-financing and ICANN should
> not be looking to ccTLDs to subsidise them.
>
> In particular, Nominet is opposed to a "tax" on domain names -
> particularly in the absence of adequate representation and controls
> over the way that money would be spent.
>
> There are arguments 'for' and 'against' but it is the lack of real
> representation for registrants that undermines the case for placing a
> disproportionate "tax" on these same registrants. Taxation without
> representation is always a recipe for trouble.
>
> "What? I as a Brit have to pay an extra sum out of my family budget
> because some quango in California says so? Who are they to tell our
> British registry what to do? What authority do they have? Who do they
> think they are?"
>
> Nominet is not anti-international at all. It wants deeper ties between
> ICANN and the local/national internet communities. Nominet has been a
> rational presence on the international scene, seeking a rational and
> legitimate governance of the DNS and the functions of the Internet.
>
> Personally I think that ICANN's governance roles have been neither
> rational nor legitimate in the past.
>
> The legitimacy of ICANN is the mandate they get from the US Department
> of Commerce.
>
> That is *not* an adequate mandate for administering an international
> resource which belongs to all of *us*.
>
> ICANN has been so stupid about this. If only they had created a true
> and open At Large movement with elected representatives on their Board
> of Directors, they would have been able to say: "See! Here is our
> legitimacy! All the individuals in the world who want to engage in the
> governance of their resource can seek or grant representation!"
>
> They seem to have spectacularly missed the boat. Then they're
> surprised that people start calling for a legitimacy based on an
> International Organisation like UN instead.
>
> The problem for ICANN is the problem of legitimacy.
>
> And without legitimacy, how can they claim the right to "tax" other
> countries?
>
> Yrs,
> Richard Henderson
> www.atlarge.org
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Hugh Dierker
>   To: Richard Henderson
>   Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 3:55 AM
>   Subject: Re: [ga] Nominet UK's response to ICANN's Strategic Plan
>
>
>   ccTLDs are resources of the Nation to whom they are assigned. An
> "international body" taxing that nation for exploiting these resources
> is novel. With that said the internet is an international resource and
> interacting international carries responsibilities to the
> international community. Taxing anyone without representation is
> wrong. Demanding a poll tax for representation is wrong. Funny how a
> few colonies that were not much more than corporations, through off a
> yoke of taxation without representation just a few hundred years ago
> and now taxes, without representation the citizenry of the very nation
> accused of doing it wrongfully in the first place. Equally ironic it
> is a corporation of the fairly new free nation that is being used to
> place the tax.
>   The Globalization and modernization of taxation seems like virtue
> standing on its' head.
>
>   Eric

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
    Pierre Abelard

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
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